Your boyfriend, husband, guy best friend, whoever it is, they love gambling on games. They try to explain it to you when they’re drunk at a bar or pissed their parlay already didn’t cash and no matter how many times they explain it you just don’t understand it. I get it, it’s a weird system with random words, spread, overs, unders, moneyline, props, parlays, what the hell does it all mean. Honestly, it ain’t that bad, so sit back relax and let me try to break it down for you.

Overs and Unders

First off, if he’s betting overs and unders this dude is a huge vibes guy. He is the life of the party, wants everyone to have a good time, and drinks way too many beers every Saturday.

This is the easiest one to understand. For every single sports game there is a number put out by the sports books (the casinos and companies that make all the bets available for degenerates like me and your boyfriend) which is their best guess on the total points scored in a game when you add both teams scores together. Typically the totals will be something that ends in a .5 so that way there is no way for the total to be exactly what Vegas predicted when they laid all the bets down.

So let’s use a hypothetical. In week one the LA Rams play the SF 49ers and currently the total is set at 49.5. My gut reaction is to bet the under, meaning I think that when the game is over and you add the two scores together the highest possible total score will be 49, or possibly lower. If they score a total of 49 or under - let’s say a 28-21 game - then the under would win. But if the final score is something like 30-24 game then the over would be the winner. So to keep it simple find the number vegas put out, bank on if you think both scores added up will be higher (over) or lower (under) than what they said and you can bet overs and unders.

There are things like team totals which work the exact same way except instead of adding the scores you’re only concerned about one team’s total. For a game like that I would guess the 49ers team total is around 21.5. So the question is do you think the 49ers will score at least 22 points or at most 21 points? If you think they will score 22 or more you bet the over on the team total but if you think they’re capped at 21 points going against the Rams defense then you bet the under on the team total. Kapeesh? Let’s move on.

Moneyline

Ok, this one messes people up a lot but once you get the hang of it it’s really easy. This is the easiest bet to make but you have to understand how vegas puts odds out to understand if anything is a good bet. Moneyline is a bet where you bet on a team to win, no strings, no bullshit, just win the game. Simple, right? If you think the rams will kill the Niners week one then bet them moneyline, if you think the Niners got a shot then bet on the Niners on the Moneyline. However, not all teams are equal there is always an underdog and a favorite so how does Vegas tilt the odds in their favor to make sure they still get their cut? They make the odd reflect the likelihood of a certain team winning. 

So let’s say a high school football team had to go up against an NFL team and you put money on the NFL team to win, Vegas would not give you a lot of winnings because it is almost a guarantee it would happen, however if you put money on the high school team the payout would be INSANELY high. So let’s break down how these sportsbooks put that into writing: the two things you have two remember are plusses (+) and minuses (-) and the number 100. That’s literally it. Forget anything else you know about the rest of the world and just remember those two things.

Vegas will always have odds read out as either a plus or minus followed by a number. So you may see something like +200 or -200 or +10000 or -105. If you see a plus before the number it means that if you bet 100 dollars (I told you to remember the number 100) and win you would get paid that much money. So let’s say you see a bet for +200 and bet 100 dollars on it and win then you would win 200 dollars plus get your original money back. So plusses mean that team is an underdog and it is less likely to win so Vegas rewards bettors by making the odds better for them or else no one would bet on them. Now if you see a minus followed by a number then it means you would need to risk that much money to win 100 dollars (don’t forget about the number 100). So if you see a bet that is -200 that means that you would need to bet 200 dollars to get 100 dollars in winnings, that means the team is so favored that Vegas doesn’t want to pay out exactly 1:1 or else everyone would put their money on the favorite every week and they would be out of business.

One note about odds is that an “even” bet with vegas will always look like -105. That means it’s pretty much a 50/50 bet - you would have to risk 105 dollars to win 100, however Vegas always keeps the odds in their favor just slightly on these 50/50 bets so they can guarantee they are always making money.

Spreads

Okay, this one is a little tricky but if you’re still with me then you should be able to handle this one. This is the most common bet amongst sports fans. Remember how I just said there is always an underdog and a favorite in sports games? Well, the spread takes that out of the equation. Instead of betting on a team to win a game Vegas asks the team to win by a certain margin. Why would they do that? Because all bets on spreads are -105 (or like we just learned they are 50/50 bets which means in the long term better payouts). So let’s go back to the LA Rams vs 49ers game in week one.

Spreads will also show up with a plus or minus in front of it and the easiest way to think about it is that is the teams starting score. So if a team has a -3.5, they start the game with negative three and a half points, if they have a +3.5 they start the game with 3.5 points. So the favorite always has a minus before the number on a spread - it seems counterintuitive but again remember that the number you see on the spread is their starting score. So the favorite needs to score 4 points to be ahead of the team starting at 0 - because they are starting at -3.5 points. Or let’s take the other scenario, let’s say you bet on the underdog, they can lose by 3 points and you can still win that bet if you bet on them. Let’s go back to the 49ers vs Rams scenario.

Currently the spread on their game is 3.5 points with the Rams favored, so the Rams bet looks like -3.5 and the 49ers bet looks like +3.5. So if the final score is what I said earlier of 21-28 with the Rams winning, then anyone that bet on the Rams “against the spread” wins that bet because they beat the 49ers by more than 4 points. Now let’s say the 49ers win the game by 1 point, let’s say 17-18 in favor of San Francisco, they would win the bet because they are the underdog they don’t need to win by 3.5 points (remember they started this game with 3.5 points). Actually they could lose this game by 3 points and the 49ers bettors would still win their bet! That’s because if they started with 3 and a half extra points at the start and only lost by three (let’s say a final score of this game was 20-17 in favor of LA) and we add their 3.5 points into their final score we see that “against the spread” the final score of the game is 20-20.5 in favor of the 49ers.

Those are all the major bets. I will write a later blog on some other stuff like parlays, prop bets, and some other dumb stuff but now you’re prepped for your annoying ass boyfriend talking about all his bets he is making this season. Hope you enjoyed it.

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